3-minute Maiko

As a group of university students go out for a night on the town, a sophomore known only as "The Girl with Black Hair" experiences a series of surreal encounters with the local nightlife – all the while unaware of the romantic longings of "Senpai", a senior student who has been creating increasingly fantastic and contrived reasons to run into her in an effort to win her heart.

Takatoshi Minamiyama majors in art at an university in Kyoto. On the train to the school, he sees Emi Fukuju and falls in love with her at first sight. Gathering up all his courage, he speaks to her. They begin to date and enjoy happy days together, but Emi reveals her secret to him.

Yukiko's fiance learns her mother runs a geisha house and ends their engagement. She despises what her mother does until one of her clients shows interest and starts to woo her.

Immediately following the events of "Ikki tousen: Xtreme Xecutor", the kids from Nanyo Academy head to Kyoto for a school trip. Before long, they run into rival classmates from other Kanto schools and find themselves confronted by Kyoto's best fighters. It's a battle of epic proportions. Hopefully the city of Kyoto will be left standing!

There's a war going on in ancient Kyoto. A war fought in shadows, between the forces of the Shogunate's armed enforcers, the Shinsengumi, and the vampire-like Ronin warriors known as the Rasetsu or Furies. And trapped in the middle is a young woman disguised as a man. Seeking her missing father, Chizuru Yukimura comes to Kyoto only to find her fate forever intertwined with the destinies of Shinsengumi Vice commander Toshizo Hijikata and his elite force of swordsmen. Because Chizuru's father has created a secret elixir that enhances the user's strength, speed and healing, and the furies will do anything and kill anyone in order to control that power!

Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.

A Japanese TV documentary, NHK Tokushu Tezuka Osamu: Sosaku no Himitsu (Secrets of Creation.), was originally released as a book-mounted DVD, with cooperation from Tezuka Productions. Screened in Japan in 1986, it was filmed as Tezuka prepared for the Hiroshima International Animation Festival in 1985. It shows him working in his private studio and with his team, and gives glimpses of his wife, colleagues and old friends.

NHK TV special about the making of the Japanese animated film "From Up on Poppy Hill" (コクリコ坂から)

Set in Kyoto, Japan, a love story takes place between Hajime (Masaki Okada) and Reika (Kaya Kiyohara). Hajime is a handsome young man, who is usually a second quicker than everyone else and straightforward. He works at the post office. Reika is a young woman, who is usually a step slower than everyone else. After Valentine's Day, Hajime wakes up and is unable to remember what happened that day.

A prequel to the 2013 Kyoto Animation series Free! which is an adaptation of light novel High☆Speed!

Shigeru Kajiwara (Joe Odagiri) works part-time at a company that sells mysterious health food. One day, the other employees run off with the company's money.

Kyoto during the Heian period (the 10th century) in Japan. Tens of thousands dead, gutters filled with corpses, children abandoned in the mountains, and groups of wild dogs vigilantly watching outside the city. The elegant image of the Heian period has been shown in many literary and artistic works. However, Katabuchi's new work takes us back to Kyoto a thousand years ago, when the city was shrouded in darkness due to repeated epidemics of plague.

Yumi, the wife of elite employee Keiji Suzuki, lives in a nice house and enjoys an affluent life. Yumi's peaceful life is suddenly interrupted by an intruder.

A youth lyrical story of pure love of a girl who grew up in the Kyoto Gion quarter, with a geisha mother and sisters Maiko and a college student.

An all-new action-adventure that follows Dorothy, the self-proclaimed genius con artist who recruited the infamous Laurent Thierry to the life of crime. This time around, she has been defeated at her own game by the Shanghai Longu Bang and is thought to be dead, but she soon reemerges in a small seaside village. Pursued by the underworld of Taipei, she heads to Kyoto, but what will she find waiting for her there…?!

An American Shorthair kitten wanders away from her mother and siblings one day while enjoying a walk outside. Lost in her surroundings, she struggles to find her way back home. She is soon found by the Yamada family. Finding a home for her proves to be difficult, so the family eventually decides to keep the kitten, naming her "Chi".

Ohisama is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2011 in the Asadora time slot. Set in Nagano prefecture, "Ohisama" covers the life of Yoko Sudo (Mao Inoue) through World War II. Yoko Sudo with her smile is able to bring brightness to those around her & she follows her mother's motif to laugh through the hard times. During the onset of WW II, Yoko is a high school student and "Ohisama" follows her as she eventually becomes a teacher and then gets married and has a child. Yoko then opens a soba restaurant with her student. --asianwiki

Sato's life – or what's left of it – is a paranoid mess of conspiracy theories and social anxieties. He's terrified of the outside world; his apartment is overflowing with the remnants of cheap take-out food; and his retinas have been permanently scarred by a steady diet of internet porn. But maybe it's not all his fault. After all, the nefarious N.H.K. is out there, and they’re determined to turn society's fringe-dwellers into a brainwashed lot of jobless, hopeless, futureless recluses. Enter Misaki – a mysterious girl-next-door type who is Sato's last chance to beat-down his inner demons and venture out into the light of day. She's ready to help him overcome his crippling phobias, but Sato would rather cower in his existential foxhole and pretend to work on the demo for his virtual sex game. He’s afraid to face the world. She's strangely desperate to fix a total stranger. Maybe together they can be normal.

On her first day attending the all-girls Nanamori Middle School in Takaoka, Toyama Akaza Akari oversleeps, to be awakened by her one-year-senior childhood friends: the level-headed Funami Yui and the often self-centered Toshinou Kyouko. Planning on exciting club activities at school, Akari joins the club her older friends have set up. But as it turns out Kyouko and Yui simply took over the former room of the now defunct tea ceremony club for their own Amusement Club. In regard to what the club does, Kyouko explains: "We just hang out and do whatever we want!" This is not exactly what the helpful and energetic Akari had hoped for. Surprisingly a few days later Yoshikawa Chinatsu joins the club even though she mistook it for the former tea ceremony club. And so the four fun-loving girls could enjoy spending their spare time at the club were it not for the student council, in person of vice president Sugiura Ayano, who does her very best to shut down this unauthorized club.

The twin girls Tajima Megumi and Ichijo Nozomi was separated at birth after their parents had divorced. Years later they meet each other. Both of them have a career within the entertainment industry. Megumi who lives in Matsue, Shimane sings in the band Shijimijiru, and Nozomi is a maiko, an apprentice geisha in Kyoto.

NHK WORLD PRIME brings you a world of mainly documentaries, and more. Tune in to see special select programs on all sorts of topics and genres.

Holmes, a young man whose family runs an antique shop in Kyoto, has the unique ability to read people and instantly distinguish genuine and high value antiques. When a local high school student, Aoi Maki, starts working alongside Holmes, together they begin to unravel the many mysteries surrounding the antiques brought to the shop.

Soccer Fever is an anime produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, RAI and TMS-Kyokuchi, it was broadcast by NHK and RAI. This anime is part of Eisei Anime Gekijou. In Italy it is known as I ragazzi del mundial.

Kiyo and Sumire came to Kyoto from Aomori Prefecture, dreaming of becoming maiko. But after an unexpected turn of events, Kiyo starts working as the live-in cook at the Maiko House. Their story unfolds in Kagai, the Geiko and maiko district in Kyoto, alongside their housemate maikos. Kiyo nourishes them daily with her homecooked meals, and Sumire strives toward her promising future as the once-in-a-century maiko.

Nagomu Irino returns to his Kyoto home for the first time in ten years when his father is hospitalized. Nagomu is eager to take over Ryokushou, the family's Japanese sweet shop, but he's instead asked to be a father figure to Itsuka Yukihira, the girl everyone calls the successor.

Two inseparable friends move to Kyoto to chase their dreams of becoming maiko, but decide to pursue different passions while living under the same roof.

The 61st NHK Asadora Drama is Asuka. Set in Kyoto in the home of a traditional Japanese candy-maker, Asuka is the story of one young girl's dream to one day walk in her father's shoes and become a top candy-maker in the male-dominated world of wagashi (Japanese confectionery). Asuka grows to be a healthy, adventurous young girl with a deep curiosity and, a desire to become a candy-maker like her father. This NHK drama is one of the best in years with an excellent cast, a well-developed story based on extensive research into the traditional worlds of candy making and the tea ceremony in Kyoto, and beautiful scenery and settings in Kyoto and the surrounding areas.

15-year-old Chitose Hitotose moves out of the orphanage back to his vacant parents' house and finds himself very alone and unhappy. But when five of his female high school teachers decide to move in with him to become his new mothers, he learns that the chaos of their constant attention and concern change his life for the better, if only to teach him about the very special meaning of being part of a family and enjoying a quiet moment.

Holly the Ghost, also known in Japan as The Ghost Holly, is a Japanese anime series directed by Minoru Okazaki. The series first aired in Japan on the NHK network between January 28, 1991 and March 6, 1992, spanning 200 episodes.

An NHK flagship program, centered around a diverse range of documentaries, delves into the dynamic shifts of society, politics and history, as well as the breathtaking wonders of the natural world.